I built a free macOS app to mount SFTP, S3, and FTP as real Finder volumes — no macFUSE

Ayon Pal — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:14:04 +0000

TL;DR

macsh is a tiny menu-bar app that mounts SFTP, S3-compatible, and FTP/FTPS servers as native macOS volumes. Open them in Finder, drag files in, edit in place. No macFUSE, no kernel extension, no Recovery-mode reboot. Apache-2.0, free.

Heads up: macsh is built with Claude Code. I'm the designer, tester, and maintainer; the implementation is AI-written under my direction. Bugs and decisions are mine. Also, I am first time posting to Dev.to.

The problem

When accessing linux servers I want to treat a remote box like a folder on my Mac. Then I rediscover that the options on macOS are… not great:

macFUSE works, but it's a kernel extension. That means a Recovery-mode reboot to allow it, and Apple keeps making this path narrower with each release.
Cyberduck / Mountain Duck / Transmit are excellent — and paid or not easy to integrate in finder. Also I find Cyberduck causing heavy battery draining.
Finder → Connect to Server speaks SMB, AFP, WebDAV, NFS. No SFTP. No S3.

I just wanted Finder, but pointed at my server. So I shipped it. Rclone was working great - but had to run commands with remembering ip addresses etc. And a quick easy way to use it without remembering how to manage them.

How it works (the boring secret)

macsh is a thin SwiftUI wrapper around rclone's NFS-mount mode.

remote ──rclone──▶ local WebDav/NFS socket ──macOS──▶ /Volumes/my-server

rclone serves the remote over a local NFS/WebDav socket. macOS already speaks NFS/WebDAV natively, so it mounts that socket as a regular volume. Result:

No kernel extension
No sudo
No "allow this system extension" dance
Works inside the Mac's normal sandboxing model

The app's job is the boring-but-important stuff: a nice form for adding remotes, Keychain for secrets, launch-at-login, mount/unmount lifecycle, in-app SSH key generation, update checks, menu-bar UX.

What's in it

SFTP / SSH — password, existing key file, or generate a new key in-app
S3-compatible — AWS, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, MinIO, DigitalOcean Spaces, custom endpoints
FTP / FTPS — explicit and implicit TLS
Auto-mount at login
Live updates — server-side changes appear in seconds
Keychain-backed credentials — never plaintext on disk

Two builds, pick one

	`macsh`	`macsh-lite`
DMG size	~32 MB	~800 KB
rclone	bundled	uses your `brew install rclone`
Best for	"just works"	smaller download / power users

Honest caveats

Apple Silicon only. No Intel build. macOS 14+ (Sonoma). Tested on Tahoe.
Unsigned releases. I don't have an Apple Developer ID yet (and for now no plan for it 😅) , so after dragging the app to /Applications you'll need to run this once:

  xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/macsh.app

Otherwise Gatekeeper says "macsh is damaged" — it isn't, that's just Apple's wording for "I don't recognise this signature."

It's v0.1.x. Expect rough edges. File issues!

Try it

Repo: https://github.com/AyonPal/macsh
Releases (DMG): https://github.com/AyonPal/macsh/releases
License: Apache-2.0

A star on the repo helps a lot. PRs and issues very welcome.

Forem: Ayon Pal